As more people turn to AI tools like ChatGPT to free up their time spent writing, Brisbane-based academic Adriana Eufrosina Bora is focusing on a tool devoted to reading.

Specifically, her AI software will have a specialised niche interest in the Modern Slavery Act, a document that companies and organisations in many countries across the world increasingly need to address if they are to win government tenders or contracts.

Depending on the size of the company, the documents can run to more than 1000 pages long, as organisations demonstrate the values and policies they hold and the procedures they enact to ensure modern forms of slavery aren’t part of the way they recruit and retain staff and conduct business.

The workload, as Eufrosina Bora explained to InQueensland, is in some cases overwhelming government departments where staff are tasked to check compliance manually.

The burden is creating backlogs, delays in procurement and enormous pressure on staff.

In such environments, mistakes can be made under stress, allowing some companies with bad track records or loose standards to slip through the net, Eufrosina Bora told InQueensland.

“These reports are massive – hundreds and hundreds of pages – and there are hundreds and hundreds of reports,” she said.

The Romanian-born Eufrosina Bora, who has also studied in the UK, France and Hong Kong before starting her PhD in mathematical science and AI technology at QUT, is working with her research collaborators here and overseas to develop an AI ‘brain’ that not only reads and comprehends, but will ‘red flag’ any inconsistencies or irregularities that indicate unethical behaviour or modern slavery breaches.

These indicators include the overseas outsourcing of work at unethical rates or strange transactions that could be trails of money laundering.

Observers familiar with her work say the technology brings together the disciplines of mathematics, psychology, and technology, while harbouring the potential to transform lives.

The spotlight on Eufrosina Bora’s work comes in the same week as World Maths Day on March 23 and in the middle of Brisbane’s World Science Festival, supported by InQueensland’s sister-platform The Weekend Edition.

Both events highlight the importance of integrating empathy and compassion into new technological advancements, and how more women entering the STEM industries can bring positive change in a field traditionally dominated by men.

“At the moment there is no incentive for companies to even try to improve knowing that nobody is ever going to keep them accountable because they don’t have the time and they don’t have the technology that is able to collate and cross-check against all the other modern slavery statements submitted,” Eufrosina Bora said.

“We now have this opportunity to do this deep level analysis across multiple data sources and cross-checked across multiple metrics at a fraction of the time it would take manually, so people all over the world can have confidence in the company they want to buy from, trade with or invest in.”